


Beast in the Mirror

by gentlezombie



Category: Beauty and the Beast (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 05:54:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentlezombie/pseuds/gentlezombie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A futuristic take on "Beauty and the Beast". In a world of dust and metal, it's hard to tell who's the beast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beast in the Mirror

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ghinry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghinry/gifts).



> A Yuletide treat for Carnadine. This story wanted to get written between 4 and 6 a.m. Thank you for the inspiration!

I duck my head as I run through the corridor. The place is a jagged labyrinth of dust and rubble, pitfalls and haywire electrics. Broken cables hang from the ceiling like thick black vines, ready to bite me with a shower of sparks.

 

The sparks are blue and the dust is yellowish-gray like dried wheat. I know this from the datastick stuck conveniently in the slot at the back of my neck. People are obsessed with defining everything, drawing lines and boundaries so that what is inside will be neat and understandable. They have definitions for colours, too: simple items to associate them with. A correct apple is red. In my optic sensors, everything is a different shade of gray.

 

Part of the ceiling has collapsed and I have to crawl in the narrow tunnel of crumpled metal. My hands and knees leave faint marks on the softer material. It’s been a while since I’ve been scavenging in one of these old buildings, and it amazes me how everything gives under me. I guess we got harder with the times.

 

Then it’s up again, scanning the environment for movement and changes in temperature. I’m standing at the entrance of a large hall, the high, ornate windows above the doorway long since broken. Coloured-glass windows like in churches, my history package provides me, and I imagine the floor covered in tiny, sharp pebbles of red and blue and green. They crunch beneath my boots as I enter.

 

I falter in regulating my breathing. The cogwheels in my lungs rattle in distress as I take in the room. The whole hall has been made of mirrors. Huge walls of silver have rained down, didn’t last the pressure wave. Several sharp chunks still cling to the walls, crisscrossed with spider web cracks. As I walk I have to step on my own face, multiplied a thousand times. It’s not a nice feeling.

 

It’s been a while since I’ve seen something as irrelevant as a mirror. It surprises me how much I have changed again. Metal plating covers my chin and nose now and rises up to my forehead, where the proud spikes mark me as a freelancer. The old optics, completely lacking colour-vision but excellent in measuring shapes and depths, are a delicate affair, held together by a framework of thin wires. I look worn, like everybody except the richies, second-hand. My only vanity is the mass of dreads hanging past my shoulders, any real hair long since replaced with synthetic fibre and plastic tubing.

 

But my object is in the middle of the room, huddling under a nest of blankets and scraps of cloth, and I bite my dental plates together and proceed. As I touch the bundle of fabric with the toe of my boot it jolts violently, rolling away from me on the sharp glass.

 

“It’s okay,” I say. “I’ve come to get you.” It’s almost true. No one’s allowed to live in the old disaster area anymore. The only people who come here are scavengers and thieves, and they get to keep what they find.

 

The bundle twitches and sheds its layers, and it is a person after all, back turned to me and head bowed. I crouch down and talk to it.

 

“C’mon. Look at me. You’re all right, I won’t hurt you.”

 

Still refusal, filthy hood tightly wrapped around its head.

 

“You don’t want to be alone, do you? I can take you with me so you won’t be lonely anymore. Just look at me.”

 

Hesitation for a brief minute, and then it – she – turns around and pulls the hood away from over her eyes. She lets out a scream when she sees me, throws herself away from me, hides her face in her hands. I fight the urge to do the same.

 

She’s – unaltered. Her face is a pale, empty canvas, and her eyes peer at me bloodshot from between her fingers, the whites of her eyeballs flashing at me and the tiny veins clearly visible. She has no marks of identity on her, no protection. Under her pile of scraps, she is more naked than I knew anyone could be. It’s hard for me to even look at her. It must be harder to be looked at.

 

“I’m ugly,” she whispers, frail fingers tangling in matted hair. “I know that, they all told me and threw rocks at me. I don’t know why I’m like this but I’m wrong. Now you saw me and you don’t want me. I have to be alone, always alone. Maybe you’ll throw rocks at me too.”

 

A mix of pity and disgust wells up in me. Poor little monster.

 

I force myself to reach out for her and try not to flinch as my hand lands on warm, soft flesh. I won’t lie and tell her she’s beautiful.

 

“Come with me”, I say. “We can fix this, fix you. Make you better.”

 

She looks up at me, eyes wide. The colour of violets in spring, says the data. I have no way of reading her expression.

 

“Could you do that? Make me beautiful? Make me – human?”

 

“All’s possible, honey”, I tell her. “We’ve got the right clinic for everything.”

 

And if not, well, I’ve heard unaltered are the newest kink for the rich and the bored.


End file.
